Give Peace A Chance

From Wikipedia:

“Give Peace a Chance” is an anti-war song written by John Lennon (originally credited to Lennon–McCartney), and recorded with the participation of a small group of friends in a performance with Yoko Ono in a hotel room in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Released as a single in July 1969 by the Plastic Ono Band on Apple Records, it is the first solo single issued by Lennon, released while he was still a member of the Beatles, and became an anthem of the American anti-war movement during the 1970s. It peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 2 on the British singles chart.

Writing and recording

The song was written during Lennon and Ono’s “Bed-In” honeymoon in Montreal. When asked by a reporter what he was trying to achieve by staying in bed, Lennon answered spontaneously “Just give peace a chance”. He went on to say this several times during the Bed-In. Lennon asked his press officer, Derek Taylor to find a recording engineer. On 1 June 1969, in Room 1742 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, André Perry, owner of a local recording studio, arrived and used a simple setup of four microphones and a four-track tape recorder he brought with him.

The recording session was attended by dozens of journalists and various celebrities, including Timothy Leary, Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, Joseph Schwartz, Rosemary Woodruff Leary, Petula Clark, Dick Gregory, Allen Ginsberg, Roger Scott, Murray the K and Derek Taylor, many of whom are mentioned in the lyrics. Lennon played acoustic guitar and was joined by Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers, also on acoustic guitar.

The day after the recording, Perry engaged and recorded three professional singers from Montreal to add back vocals to the production, among them Mouffe and Robert Charlebois, who was a famous pop-star in Quebec and in France.

Some years later, Perry recalled the occasion and spoke about the challenges of getting a good sound out of the recording. Because of the room’s poor acoustics, he said, the raw recording could not have been released without help:

Originally there were no intentions to have any over-dubs done. But when I left John, he looked at me and I said, ‘Well, I’ll go back to the studio and listen to this and see what it’s like.’ And then I decided that the background was a bit too noisy and needed a little ‘sweeping.’ By this I mean, we kept all the original stuff, we just improved it a bit by adding if you like, some voices. So we called a bunch of people in the studio that night, I did, actually that was my decision. And that’s probably why John gave me such a credit on the single. And since it was multi-track I dubbed the original 4-track to an 8-track machine and then used the other 4-tracks to overdub some voices. The next day I went back to John [with the mix]. They moved everybody out of the room and it was just the three of us, with Yoko, and I played it for him and he thought it was wonderful. Kept it ‘as is.’ There’s a story going around about overdubbing in London, England. Nothing was overdubbed in England. The only thing that was overdubbed, like I said, is some of these people, and the reason why I did it, is I wanted to give him some kind of option. You see the point of the matter, it’s not that we wanted to cheat anything, it was a question of like, not usable, the condition was absolutely terrible. [We took] the original stuff that was there, and added a few voices in a cleaner recording environment.

Songwriting credits

When initially released in 1969, the song was credited to Lennon–McCartney.

On later releases curated by the Lennon Estate, only Lennon is credited; viz. the 1990s reissue of the 1986 album Live in New York City, the 2006 documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon, and the 1997 compilation album Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon and its DVD version six years later.

John Lennon expressed his regrets about being “guilty enough to give McCartney credit as co-writer on my first independent single instead of giving it to Yoko, who had actually written it with me.“

According to author Ian MacDonald, the credit was Lennon’s way of thanking McCartney for helping him record “The Ballad of John and Yoko” at short notice.

Lyrics

The original last verse of the song refers to: “John and Yoko, Timmy Leary, Rosemary [Leary], Tommy Smothers, Bobby Dylan, Tommy Cooper, Derek Taylor, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, and Hare Krishna”. In the performance of “Give Peace a Chance” included on the Live Peace in Toronto 1969 album, Lennon openly stated that he could not remember all of the words and improvised with the names of the band members sharing the stage with him and anything that came to mind: “John and Yoko, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann, Penny Lane, Roosevelt, Nixon, Tommy Jones and Tommy Cooper, and somebody.” The third verse contains a reference to masturbation, but Lennon changed this to “mastication” on the official lyric sheet. He later stated this was a “cop out” but wanted to avoid unnecessary controversy.

Release and aftermath

“Give Peace a Chance”, backed with Ono’s “Remember Love” as the B-side, was released on 4 July 1969 in the UK, and a few days later on 7 July 1969 in the US. The song reached number 2 in the UK Singles Chart, and number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. Billboard described it as “an infectious rhythm ballad” with “clever arrangement and performance.”

The song quickly became the anthem of the anti Vietnam-war and counterculture movements, and was sung by half a million demonstrators in Washington, D.C., on Vietnam Moratorium Day, on 15 November 1969. They were led by Pete Seeger, who interspersed phrases like, “Are you listening, Nixon?” and “Are you listening, Agnew?”, between the choruses of protesters singing, “All we are saying … is give peace a chance”.

A live concert performance of the song is included on Live Peace in Toronto 1969. (Source: Apple Records) John, Yoko, and the Elephant’s Memory performed the song on the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon in September 1972. (Source: YouTube) […]

[I’m feeling] guilty enough to give McCartney credit as co-writer on my first independent single instead of giving it to Yoko, who had actually written it with me.

John Lennon – From “John Lennon: The Life” by Philip Norman, 2009

I didn’t write it with Paul; but again, out of guilt, we always had that thing that our names would go on songs even if we didn’t write them. It was never a legal deal between Paul and me, just an agreement when we were fifteen or sixteen to put both our names on our songs. I’d put his name on Give Peace A Chance though he had nothing to do with it. It was a silly thing to do, actually. It should have been Lennon-Ono.

John Lennon – From “All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono” by David Sheff, 2010

[On playing John Lennon’s songs] I didn’t want to go crazy with it: ‘Oh sacred memory of The Great Loved One.’ I didn’t want to get too precious. But I did feel good about copping a little medley, just nice songs to sing. And the emotion of singing some John songs, for the first time in my life. It should be Liverpool; if I’m going to do it, that’s the place. […] I finally got to do John’s part on ‘Help!’ and ‘Give Peace A Chance’. Which, of course, I’d never done. And ‘Strawberry Fields’, a great song to sing. I always loved it, and thought, I won’t get precious, won’t think about it for hours. Originally I was just going to take an acoustic, stand there for quarter of an hour and totally get into a few John songs. But then it’s ‘McCartney Sings Lennon’, all on me own, and it felt too precious. So I thought, why don’t we just learn these up with the band? It’ll be part of the normal act, but we’ll just stop a while and say, ‘Here, a little tribute’.

Paul McCartney – From “Conversations with McCartney” by Paul du Noyer, 2016

Lyrics

Officially appears on

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Live performances

“Give Peace A Chance” has been played in 128 concerts and 1 soundchecks.

Latest concerts where “Give Peace A Chance” has been played

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